Archive | Super Weird Substance

On April Fools’ Day our record label, Super Weird Substance, is hosting its most ambitious event to date – a 14 hour long Happening that takes over The Florrie, a stunning Grade II Victorian community heritage venue in Liverpool.

A trio of special festival appearances to flag up this summer, where, apart from doing my normal DJ stint, some of the artists on Super Weird Substance will also be featured – Kermit Leveridge, The Reynolds and the Reverend Cleve Freckleton – under the banner of Greg Wilson Presents Super Weird Substance, following on from the album we released late last year:http://www.superweirdsubstance.com/swscd001-greg-wilson-presents-super-weird-substance

I’d written most of this post at the end of last month on the flight from Lisbon to Salvador in Brazil, where I played New Years Eve at the idyllic setting of Biopeba Island in Bahia for the Mareh Music Festival. The intention was to post once I got back to the UK on January 3rd, but fate took a turn.

The last month or so has passed quickly – apart from my DJ commitments, pretty much every waking hour has revolved around preparation for the first Super Weird, Substance album release, which compiles the label’s singles so far and is issued on on 2xCD (including mix I’ve put together) on November 13th. Just about on top of everything now, until the next avalanche of things to do, I’d forgotten how time-consuming the day-to-day variables of running a record label can be. Great fun though, nothing like a bit of thinking on your feet. More about the album here:http://www.superweirdsubstance.com/swscd001-greg-wilson-presents-super-weird-substance/

Anyone who’s been following the blog during recent times will be in no doubt of my admiration for John Higgs’s ‘The KLF: Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds’, a book like no other, full of incendiary ideas and inspiration – a proper mindsparker. I wrote about it here:http://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2014/11/the-gateway-drug

Just a week to go until one of my favourite festivals – tucked away on the North Wales coast in a magical village like no other. Famous as the location for the classic ’60s TV show ‘The Prisoner’, Portmeirion is a place plucked out of the imagination.

‘Don’t You Worry Baby The Best Is Yet To Come’ is a track that was first played at Blackpool Mecca in 1976 following the acquisition of a US promo from fabled Norfolk based Glaswegian record dealer John Anderson (Soul Bowl) by DJ Colin Curtis, and then a release copy via a London based supplier who specialized in importing new American releases to distribute to US Troops in Germany & Europe, specifically black GI’s with a love of Soul and Funk. The Northern Soul sessions at the Mecca were hugely influential, the club revered, along with Manchester’s Twisted Wheel, The Catacombs in Wolverhampton, The Golden Torch in Stoke-On-Trent, and the scene’s most famous venue, Wigan Casino, at the vanguard of the movement.

Today saw the 2nd release on my new label, Super Weird Substance. It’s a tune that’s already become a big favourite when I’m playing out, people aware of it from its inclusion in a number of live mixes – it’s a track I’ve thoroughly roadtested, fine tuning until I was totally happy with how it sounded in a club environment.

Howard Marks, one of the great British anti-heroes, has just made his struggle with cancer public via an interview in the Observer over the weekend, his condition unfortunately inoperable. The 69 year old former cannabis smuggler and author of the bestselling autobiography ‘Mr Nice’, which was subsequently made into a movie with Rhys Irfans taking the lead role, is setting up a charitable foundation – funds raised going towards Howard’s ongoing treatment, as well as the completion of a documentary about him directed by the filmmaker Sam Rowland. You can read the full Observer piece here:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/24/howard-marks-inoperable-cancer-mr-nice

‘The Construct’, the opening track from the Blind Arcade Meets Super Weird Substance In The Morphogenetic Field mixtape, which is fast approaching 50,000 SoundCloud plays, is the subject of both a video, produced and directed by Elspeth Moore & Philip Lyons, and an ‘acid rework’ by Peza.

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Being a DJ

I’m a DJ from Merseyside. I started out in 1975, but stopped for almost 20 years, between 1984 and the end of 2003, at which point I started again.

One night during the period I wasn’t deejaying, turning off my mind, relaxing, and floating downstream I had what might be termed a moment of clarity. Paradoxically, although I was no longer a DJ in the literal sense I suddenly became aware that I’d never actually stopped being a DJ, for even if I was in a room with just one person I couldn’t help but ask them ‘have you heard this?’, and not only ‘heard’, but ‘have you seen this / read this?’, for it goes beyond music. Already taken somewhat aback by this nugget of self-discovery, I realised, in true eureka style, that this all pre-dates my being a DJ and goes back as far as I can remember – I’ve always had an inherent need to share, it’s absolutely central to my nature. This was quite a revelation.

So it’s no wonder that I became a Disc Jockey, for once I fell in love with those circular pieces of magical plastic during my formative years, it wasn’t a matter of choosing this as a path, the path pretty much chose me.

I don’t intend this to be a DJ blog as such, but more a blog by someone who happens to be a DJ – a place where personal emphasis takes precedence over professional, although, as I’ve already explained, the two aspects are, of course, inescapably entwined.